Health psychology: Bibliometrical results on the emergence and rapid consolidation of a new field of research and application

Abstract

Presents bibliometrical research results on the history of health psychological publications. With reference to psychological literature databases, the emergence of health psychological publications in international psychology (database PsycLit) as well as in the German-speaking countries (database PSYNDEX) was analyzed. The topics included the relevant index terms (e.g., “health care psychology”, “health behavior”, “health education”). Besides results on the first occurrence and the annual frequencies of those terms between 1970 and 1995 in the databases, bibliometrical comparisons were conducted with reference to other psychological subdisciplines and to the relative proportions of empirical and experimental studies, case and experience reports, as well as overviews and textbooks in health psychological publications. The results point to (1) a rather sudden emergence of health psychological publications in the mid-eighties (with only some weak forerunners), (2) the rapid consolidation of the number of health psychological publications on a relative high level within a few years, (3) the relative supremacy of literature overviews and textbooks in comparison to empirical research reports in health psychology, and (4) a good agreement between German-language and international publication trends. These results point to the necessity of further promotion of genuine empirical research in health psychology to assure its long-term consolidation as well as to prevent its medium-term devaluation and debasement as being not more than a brief main stream topic in psychology and health politics.